Friday, September 29, 2017

Nightmares

For someone who never remembers their dreams, waking from a scary one, and remembering the whole thing can be a bit disorienting. Even though I may be at one of the lower stress-levels in my life, something is triggering these weird nightmares. They're usually early in my sleep cycle, and occur when I was trying to stay up late in bed to finish something, or attempt a nap before actually going to bed.

I woke last night calling Jill in my sleep. Yelling, I guess, according to her. The dream wasodd, and won't sound terrifying. I was going back and forth to the garage, where a friend of mine was working on something at my workbench. A cat would appear in the corner of my eye in the dark part of the garage. Sometimes it was Olive, our kitten, who had snuck in from the house, sometimes it was Curly, the stray, who snuck in from outside. There was this feeling that the cat was going to run away. My friend at the bench left, and forgot to take some things with him. A scarf, and a t-shirt I think. Then while finding this stuff, I noticed that he had left a small space heater on, and while trying to turn it off, I became entangled in the wiring and scrap metal over the bench (I don't have scrap metal over my real one).

It was at this point that the darkness of the garage, the forgotten items, being stuck while trying to manipulate a glowing space heater, and the potentially escaping cat just became incredibly terrifying. I yelled for Jill, and woke up, feeling very disturbed. What the hell is going on?

As I said, none of this sounds particularly terrifying. Like a mundane portion of my life was being directed by Hitchcock or Kubrick. Complete with proper (improper?) camera angles and suspenseful music.

I want you to imagine a mostly-routine part of your day. Getting the mail, or taking out the trash. Now imagine it from a third-party point of view with weird shots of you breathing nervously, close ups of your shoe crushing an acorn as you step on the dark driveway. A streetlamp flickers. Slow ominuous string music plays. A neighbor's blinds move back to rest where you were being watched. The music builds as a stray cat surprises you by running accross your path with the music striking a hard pizzicato at that point. The street light flickers out as you place the garbage can (or open the mailbox). The music relaxes a little as your task is mostly done, and just as you think it's over, A figure jumps out of the shadows, the music strikes a loud string discord, the streetlight comes back on, and my son Alec waves a Ben and Jerry's Brownie Bar at you saying "want one?"

Anyway, hopefully you get the point. I think this is a side effect of my last class in school: Intro to Film Studies.